Films for Beginners
If you're reading this part of the site, you have probably never made animation movies or just begun. I am sure that you are very pleased at your films if you have just discovered how to make animation, I was. But now whenever I watch my old films I look back and snigger at how badly I had presented them. If you have read the home page of the site, you will know that I started making films with my camera on my phone. That is fine, but if you really want to kick off your films with a bang of high quality pictures(The reason my Fable Movie is pixellated when you watch it is because it has been transmitted to google video and it has made it slightly fuzzy)then you MUST ask for a digital camera for your Birthday or christmas. Right now on to making films. You must have a computer if you want to do all of the cool things you can make like sound and transition effects. A good starting program is microsoft office powerpoint. When I used it as my software, I had the 2007 version and the instructions I am about to tellyou are for that one. It may vary slightly if you have an older or newer version. first you must make loads of slides to put your pictures on. Open up the folder you have stored all your photos in and copy and paste each one to its own individual slide. It takes a Long time but you make take care with it and make sure every picture is made bigger so it fills up the whole slide. After you have added all your pictures, go to the animations section at the top off the screen. At the end of the bar (once you have clicked on animations) There is a section called advance slide that has two little tick boxes. One says On mouse click and the other says automatically after. Click on the second one (automatically after) and type in 00:01. Now you have done the hard bit. Go on to Slide Show and click view show. Now sit back and admire your work.
P.S. Your computer need an SD card slot to put your memory card from your camera in and import the pictures. On the other hand, you can always use the USB you usually get with a digital camera.
More tips:
Another habit I had when making my very first films was setting. I would just make them on my desk with all my other stuff lying around. If you want to make the films look more realistic, take those things out of the way. If you don't make films on a lego baseplate, then using them is a good idea, as it reduces the chance of lego minifigs falling over mid-film while they're walking or somthing. If you want to give your films an effect of sound, you can record soundtracks off of the internet if you purchase an electric microphone that plugs into your computer. All you need software wise, Is Powerpoint and the basic "sound recorder" which comes with your Computer.
Once you have mastered all these tips and are still looking for improvement, move on to the "Films for Improvers" section...
